Her escape started with a bath.
The testing facility at Klusross offered very basic amenities to soldiers and staff alike. Then again, even if Tanya happened to be okay with communal showers, Personnel Affairs made their objection apparent by providing a bathroom as part of her accommodation.
Already nose-deep in suds, Tanya lathered up gleefully. An onlooker would have mistaken her for a mere child if it weren't for the Type 95B operation orb suspended in the air. The orb's crimson glow added a sinister undertone to Tanya's frolic. She could have just turned the lights on, but adapting a piece of experimental hardware to function as a lamp amused her, as did the fact the orb was lit with the power of her mind.
She toyed with puns of getting more bright ideas until the soap started tickling her nose, prompting a sneeze. To her delight, the orb remained stable. She was getting a hang of it, but she did not let the illusion of success get to her.
The detached irritation Tanya routinely wore on her face returned. She still had work to do. Professor Schugel had given her an envelope containing the itinerary for tomorrow and she now had the most privacy she could have counted on to keep its contents a secret.
Tanya wiggled her toes above the water while mentally searching for the envelope in her room. She wasn't going to leave the bath for such a trifling task and, if anything, her operation orb was precise to a fault. The envelope slid underneath the door before unfurling in front of her. Tanya put her arms behind her head as she leisurely read Professor Schugel's typing.
He had gone to great lengths to pack her day with more dangerous experiments than it was humanly possible to conduct. While it flattered Tanya, superhuman expectations did not translate to a salary increase.
On the contrary, he cut her statutory meal breaks to make room for whatever his madness intended her to do. She only skimmed the list and grumbled about being cheated out of the few fringe benefits an experienced Aerial Mage counted on.
As she pondered the text of her written complaint, a noise from inside her room ground her thoughts to a halt. Tanya jumped at the realisation that someone had broken in. The operation orb stopped glowing and fell into the soapy water, leaving her in a fit of panic in complete darkness.
Tanya slipped and ended up diving underwater instead of getting up. The soap made her eyes burn, adding to her rage about losing control of the operation orb. If the spy had infiltrated her room, she rendered herself defenceless, temporarily blind and subject to a scolding from Professor Schugel. It would have been rich of her to expect the operation orb to be bathwater-resistant.
The splashing noises in the bathroom grew more intense whilst the commotion in her room continued. She managed to find the operation orb and felt her way to a towel so as to avoid facing the intruder naked. The surprise factor had its merits, but bullets were impervious to it when fired.
A towel messily tubed around her, Tanya stormed out of the bathroom to wreak havoc upon the intruder. Her eyes, still sore from the soap, darted around to spot the target. As soon as she would size up her opponent, she'd concoct a plan of action that preferably did not consist of lunging at them with the intent to scratch and bite. That was a terrible plan and Tanya would have been glad to have anything better in store.
"S-show yourself!"
The room was silent, barring the sound of water dripping from her hair. She was alone. After getting so worked up about a fight to the death, she swore under her breath about not getting release.
She did not hallucinate the happening, though. Someone really had been inside her room. Tanya was sure of it.
Desperate to find evidence of the intrusion, she left wet footprints all over the floor as she inspected her belongings. Nothing was touched or taken. The nutcracker she hadn't noticed before could have been on her reading table the whole time; she hadn't audited the disposable knick-knacks that came with the accommodation.
"Ah hah!"
Tanya beamed at a set of white clothes. The clothes looked a lot like what kitchen staff would wear if they were in their early teens. Albeit the delivery method–barging in at night unannounced–left much to be desired, it related to her upcoming activities and, therefore, must have been authorised by none other than the madman-in-charge, Professor Schugel.
It may have even been referred to in fine print somewhere on her itinerary, too. Tanya pulled at her hair in frustration when she recalled leaving the envelope in the bathroom. Sure enough, turning the lights on revealed a soggy piece of paper floating in bathwater.
Grumbling at her own avoidable mistakes, she picked it up in hopes of finding anything legible. She discerned two words at the bottom: "Deus vult."
The rest of the page was populated by wet wing-dings. She couldn't make anything out of them. Once she glimpsed at the bottom again, the two words were but a blob of ink that left a stain on her fingertips. Her itinerary belonged in the bin.
Tanya bashed her head against the wall after glancing at the mess she made all over the bathroom. Suds crept down the walls to the copious amount of water on the floor. Anyone witnessing the chaos would question her sense of reason, which meant that she'd have to clean it up ASAP.
She started by removing the towel and hopping right back in the bathtub. She wasn't done, anyway.
Experience had a hefty price tag and Tanya imagined she was on an accelerated course of how not to make a fool of oneself. Next time the enemy tried to pull a fast one, she'd be ready for them. While carrying a gun into the bathroom sounded awfully uncivilised, a knife would go swimmingly.
Tanya bubbled at another successful pun. She finished up with a thorough wash and took care of the excess water on the floor after drying herself.
A cloud of steam poofed out when she exited the bathroom. It was a relief.
Her hair needed some work to be manageable in the morning, but that didn't stop her from putting on the flowing pyjamas. She bit her lower lip as she tended to the last potential calamity of the day, the wet operation orb. Tanya dried the device to the best of her ability, but it was challenging enough to start focusing without being constantly reminded in the back of her head about the risk of a lethal malfunction. Paranoia was a double-edged sword.
With the orb tucked under the covers, Tanya held it in one hand while both eyes scanned for possible evacuation routes in case of an explosion. If all hell broke loose, she was better off as the first person to leave the facility than the first to make the ultimate sacrifice. A hero would have done the opposite, but for every hero with a past, there was a risk management specialist with a future. Calling them cowards would have oversimplified her situation.
The segue helped sideline her paranoia. By the time Tanya visualised her end in an isolated segment of her mind, the orb was already activated, gleaming warmly in her palm. No one would learn about the mishap and she would continue to find creative uses for her gear.
"Testing goes both ways, Schugel."
She fell asleep smiling. After completing her evening ritual, she thought about convenient ways to keep the orb safe throughout the night. It had to be on her person, but the usual placement around the neck would leave marks and cause pain when turning. She also wanted to keep it at a distance from any important internal organs, so the arms were a no-go. Accidentally rubbing one's eyes with a metal thing attached could easily result in a shiner, too.
Tanya had settled for the ankle before exhaustion took hold. When she drifted off to sleep, only a dim reddish hue peering from under the sheets hinted at the operation orb's location.
A standard operation orb activating in one's sleep was a non-issue, but Tanya had something much more powerful at her disposal. In her blissful ignorance, she volunteered for an unintended equipment test.
Signs of trouble brewing in the real world dripped into her dream.
She was alone, drifting in an ocean under a crimson sky. A giant silhouette high in the heavens observed her struggles to remain on the surface. Tanya knew who it was and what it was doing: mocking her. The towering evil treated the illusory world like a snow globe, in which Tanya was the one snowflake that refused to fall in line.
Invariably, she would sink. Her mind would continue fighting, but her body would reach its limit. There was no salvation in a world governed by Existence X. There was nothing for her in this world. She was alone.
The harder she tried to keep her head above the water, the heavier the weight around her ankle became. She looked down in hopes of untying it and gaped in horror at what she saw underwater: everyone she had ever met. They were all dead.
Eyes open wide and faces contorted into smile-like grimaces, they foreshadowed her fate in the depths if she didn't remove the weight she had thoughtlessly attached to herself. The operation orb around her ankle glowed bright and hot, to the point that it appeared to have melted into her flesh; the chain was gone.
Try as she might, it wouldn't come off. Her gloves singed when she clutched the operation orb and her leg lit up in pain as soon as she pulled. Desperate to remove the orb, Tanya considered self-amputation, but the spell she wanted to prepare fizzled out.
All of her mana flowed to the operation orb, acting as a leech intend to bleed her dry. She realised that the real weight of the operation orb had never increased. It was an illusion cast by her fatigue.
Most of her body had already gone underwater, leaving just her teary-eyed, abuse-spouting face above the water.
Existence X staring at her from the heavens was pleased with this. Soon she would join the rest of the flock, unable to resist in death's grasp.
Water flowed down her throat as Tanya continued losing strength. She gasped for air, yet it only made the situation worse once she submerged whole. Panic over the inevitable filled her mind. She thrashed violently, her arm raised to the crimson sky. As her final act of defiance, she made an offensive gesture with her fingers until the world around her became dark and silent. She was denied reincarnation.
Then, she woke up.
Tanya shot up, panting as she reached for her rifle and scanned the surroundings. Her eyes were too sleepy to make out more than the blurred outlines of her dark room, but it was enough to dampen her heartbeat.
She threw the rifle away and pulled the cover off. The intensity of the light and heat emanating from the operation orb meant that it was running for a long time. Tanya bared her teeth as if about to lash out and removed the operation orb.
The crimson light wouldn't die, so Tanya crawled to the far corner of her bed and stared at it. She fought the urge to smash it to bits among other irrational impulses as her mental capacity returned to normal.
Fear had gotten the upper hand, she concluded. She should have never left a mind-shattering orb on her person unchecked. The spy would have had to be stupid to try to take it from her at night when she was the most vulnerable to its effect.
Tanya stuffed the operation orb in a bedside drawer before shambling to the bathroom. Her bladder was full and it could have been the cause of her nightmare, along with sheets that were too warm in conjunction with her pyjamas.
She put the rifle where it belonged on her way back to bed. By that time she was positive that the nightmare had a physical origination, an effective way for her body to wake her up and get rid of the source of discomfort. Still, she couldn't help reading into the imagery offered by her subconscious.
It was an unlikely convenience that she would be compatible with the most powerful operation orb known to man. In a world that held magic, which it did not fully understand, in high regard, no less…